Friday, August 12, 2005

PA Payraises

Hi, folks, I'm back--sorry, work has been demanding.

Isn't it amazing how partisanship can make intellectual midgets of us all?

Note this thread from Redstate about payraises in the Pennsylvania legislature that Gov. Rendell recently signed. The text suggests that Rendell is hurting from this, that the grassroots are mobilized against him.

Yet nobody has quite explained how an act of a Republican Legislature which a Democratic Governor signed is properly the political liability of the Governor alone. If anything, PA Clean Sweep ought to be a threat to the Republicans, with its stated mission of ousting all incumbants.

Perhaps someone closer to the PA scene can explain how this makes sense, but as a former Pennsylvanian I'm a bit astonished to learn that, apparently, Keystone State politicians now take any opportunity they can to score a cheap shot against an opponent even when themselves complicit in the very policy criticized. What a strange mix of the dangerous and the unscrupulous.

It seems so long ago now to remember the day when John Heinz stood on the floor of the US Senate and authoritatively assured President Reagan, a fellow Republican, that ketchup was a condiment. Moments of startling honesty can expose the absurd in a way that standard polemics cannot, and honesty is the first casualty of partisanship.